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More and more, hotels and hospitality providers are turning to social media to create low-cost contests and other promotions. How can you get in on the trend that’s increasing fan engagement? Read on for a few ideas.

First, think about your target customer. Who’s the one booking reservations? At most hotels, this will be Mom.  So start your brainstorm with her in mind, and tailor your promotions to her desires, expectations and family role.

Then think about what your hotel has to offer. What’s its strongest selling point? In New Orleans, the huge variety of hotels leaves plenty of room to stand out–so use what makes your hotel special.

Now consider which social media tools you’re already using, and which will correspond best to your budget. The sky is the creative limit with Twitter–and it’s the lowest-cost channel for a social media promotion. Consider asking followers to submit the reason they deserve a vacation, with prizes or package stays going to the most creative 140-word submissions (and make sure to have participants tag everything with a custom #hashtag so your staff can follow the conversation).

Time-sensitive Twitter contests can be a great way to minimize unbooked inventory. Just think of tweeting something like, “The first person to retweet this message will receive a two-night stay for the price of one this weekend!” Twitter moves so fast, you’ll have those rooms filled in no time.

Foursquare is another free tool, and you can use its location-based function to your advantage by offering incentives to Mayors, or to those who visit specified locations (say, Jackson Square).

Mid-sized budgets can find success with a Facebook contest, which must be administered through a third-party application like Wildfire in order to conform to the site’s terms of service. Create a special landing page for your promotion, and be creative. For example, Hotel Jupiter in Portland, Oregon created a dressed-up mannequin named Jupiter Lily and asked guests to take pictures with her. Then, when guests tagged Jupiter Lily on Facebook, they were entered to win a free stay!

Hotel 1000, a luxury hotel in Seattle, went a step further. With custom Facebook tabs for its contest, the 1000 asked Facebook users to participate in a scavenger hunt for clues hidden throughout the hotel’s new website. Users had to “like” the Hotel 1000 before they could participate, and each click through to the new site was tracked.

When considering a social media promotion, don’t forget your neighbors, either! Try teaming up with nearby restaurants, bars or other attractions to create an inclusive package.  And always make sure to let everyone on staff know about your social media promotion, in case a guest asks about it!

We hope this helps!

Want to respond to a review of your business on Google Places? Whether you’re thanking someone for great feedback or responding to a negative review, it’s always good to engage with your clients.

Responding to reviews lets Googlers know that your company is present in the same web space as its customers, and that you’re hearing their feedback. A well-written, thoughtful response can make all the difference in what web visitors think of your company. So how do you go about responding to a Google review?

First, locate your business on Google Places. You can do this by Googling the company name and clicking “Maps”. If there is a listing for your business, click on it, and you will be taken to your Places page.

Note: You should claim your company page if you haven’t already. Claiming your page allows you to edit location info, hours, and even add photos. You will need a Google account to do this.

On your company’s Places page, you will be able to see any posted reviews. For example, here’s a snippet of Compucast’s Places page:

If you’ve claimed your page, you will see a link below each review that says, “Respond publicly as the owner.” Always remember that anything you type here will show up under your business name, so keep it professional, not personal. Google has some good tips for responding to reviews.

Though it can be tempting to argue with someone who has posted a negative review of your business, this is a good time to keep in mind the old saying, “The customer is always right.” Everyone will be able to see your response–so use it as an opportunity to show that you are a considerate businessperson who is in touch with customer sentiment.

One of the basic tenets of business and marketing is that you should never badmouth your competition if you can help it. Unless you have a very, very good reason, saying something negative about another company in your industry just makes you come off as smaller, and might even cause your customers to wonder what you might be hiding.

There is an exception to that rule, however: in your pay-per-click campaigns, going negative about your competitors can be a great thing.

We aren’t talking about actually saying terrible things about other businesses, of course, but making sure that their brands and product names don’t trigger your ads. (This process is called creating “negative keywords,” or keywords that you want to deliberately exclude from your campaign.)

Why might this exclusion be a good thing? Because there are certain situations in which customers are accustomed to a certain item, style, or taste, and they just can’t be persuaded to buy anything else. In those situations, you don’t want those searchers running up your budget or decreasing your click-through percentages.

Of course, the converse can also be true, and there might be times when you’ll want to consider bidding on keywords around a competitor’s product. In general, though, screening out buyers who clearly aren’t looking for you is usually a good way to save money and make your PPC campaigns more efficient.

As you’ve probably already noticed, search engine optimization – like most parts of the online marketing world – is constantly changing. What seemed like a firm rule yesterday might be a loose suggestion today, and a lot of notions and tactics fall in and out of favor regularly.

There is one thing that hasn’t changed about SEO, however, and isn’t likely to soon: it’s all about keyword-rich content.

Although online video marketing, social media sites, local search listings, and other trends are changing the specific formulas Google and the other search engines use, they are still, at their heart, most concerned with reading different kinds of content and trying to decide what you’re businesses website is really about.

That’s important, because it means that if you make a conscious effort to keep adding more articles, more well-titled videos, and other pieces of content to your blog and business website on a regular basis, it’s going to keep your site ranking well – regardless of what sort of small changes are made to search algorithms over time.

There may come a day when the major search engines consider other factors as heavily as they do content and keywords, but those days aren’t around the corner. For now, keep adding to your site, and you’re almost guaranteed to improve your search engine positioning over time.

When your company needs a quick response online, can it be quick and clear enough?

Have you ever wondered why it takes large organizations so long to respond to public questions, even ones with seemingly straightforward answers? One of the biggest reasons has to do with the huge numbers of layers that are involved in putting responses together – specifically legal and PR professionals – that often turn simple statements into gibberish.

It is also those layers that give small businesses such a huge advantage on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

That’s because, when important changes are taking place in your industry, it’s likely that the biggest players are going to be slow to respond. And even when they do, what they have to say probably won’t fall into the realm of “everyday plain language.” That means that, simply by telling people the plain truth, you can raise your public profile and increase customer loyalty.

A lot gets made out of the idea that problems and unusual situations create opportunities, but that’s definitely true. When it comes to social media marketing campaigns, look for the areas where your bigger competitors are slow to respond, or to share uncomfortable news. If you can be the first one to tell people how it really is, you can earn their respect – not to mention future purchases.

In a business environment where we’re all trying to do more with less and at a time when it seems like we always need to get results yesterday, it’s easy to decide to pick a direction for your search engine optimization campaign and go off to the races.

For the best long-term results – and a better ranking on Google – you’d do well to resist that urge.

Here’s why: the most important part of getting your SEO campaign off to the right foot lies in research. Specifically, you want to know what your most effective and profitable keywords are going to be (along with which ones have served you well in the past), and also how your site is currently ranking and attracting traffic.

Until you have these two details nailed down, it’s useless to try to plug forward with an SEO campaign. You simply don’t know where you’re starting from or what direction you should be headed in.

Although doing research and collecting data might not be the most exciting part of the search engine optimization process, it is an important one. Remember to take a moment to assess your position and direction, and launch your SEO campaign in a way that’s likely to make effective.

The business of websites is a bit like other creative endeavors in that ideas and fashions come to the forefront, or fall out of favor, on a regular basis. While banner ads are big for a while, they give way to flash animation, which turns into a love of scrolling frames, etc.

Amidst all of this change, however, there is one web design principle that never goes out of style: simplicity.

There’s a simple reason for this: visitors like simple webpages. They love to be able to find what they’re looking for quickly, to tell what a website or page is about in a few seconds, and to see a clean, straightforward navigational structure.

Keep that in mind as you evaluate different web designers and portfolios. Just because you can cram dozens of items on to your homepage doesn’t mean you should, or that it’s going to make your business website any more effective. Try to stick with a couple of main messages and themes and see where they take you.

Simple never goes out of style because it works. Isn’t that enough of a reason to remove distractions from your business website?

It’s almost eerie the way so many supposedly complicated Internet marketing concepts come down to simple ideas and execution. For example, have you ever considered that your landing pages may not be as effective as they could be, for the simple reason that you are asking people to do too much?

Most visitors to your site aren’t going to feel comfortable making a very large purchase after reading a 200-word product description. Neither are they likely to call you if they don’t have a good idea that your company is established and trustworthy, or give you their credit card number if they can’t tell their transaction is going to be safe.

These are only a few of the more obvious examples, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of online marketers push too hard for conversions that just aren’t realistic from a customer’s point of view. If you suspect that you might be asking too much of people, try and think about it from an objective perspective. Would you take the action that’s been requested?

If you wouldn’t, then try supplying more information or slowing down the sales process a bit. Maybe instead of asking for purchase, you should request more information or try to get your customers to sign up for a newsletter subscription. Often, taking these small steps can make it easier for people to do what you want them to do – and make your website a lot more profitable same time.

LinkedIn is a surprisingly strong tool for a more personalized form of marketing.

Like Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn has become one of those tools that every growing business or self-employed professional should be taking advantage of. Not only does the site allow you to come into contact with others who could grow your company, but also to fill out your professional profile with factors like experience, education, and recommendations.

But even though your LinkedIn profile could be one of your most powerful marketing pieces, there is an even better reason to have one and add to it over time: it just might be the first thing a potential customer sees about you in Google.

Although business websites typically have a strong enough page rank to get listed above a LinkedIn profile, most individual names don’t. And since a lot of customers will search online for information about vendors or business owners, there’s a strong chance that your LinkedIn profile could end up as one of your most often viewed resources – even above your page on the company website.

Given that whatever the link says about you could end up being the first word for potential customers, it makes sense to add as much as you can. Don’t miss out on this chance to meet and influence high-level buyers.

Philosophically speaking, Twitter is it amazing invention in that it allows for direct contact between executives, celebrities, and other public personalities to their fans and followers without having to expose something like a phone number or personal e-mail address. That makes it easier than ever for executives and other VIPs to communicate one-on-one with the public, which can be a great thing for branding and public relations.

Of course, if a free-flow of information back and forth between a single person in the world is the upside, then the downside lies in the fact that too many of us tweet without thinking.

In other words, once something has been shared, expressed, or posted on Twitter, then you can’t really get it back. There are too many examples of public personalities trying to backtrack from something he tweeted to even count, but each of them carries an implicit warning: Twitter is a great marketing tool, but executives and business owners should be very careful about thinking before they share.

Don’t assume that something you put on the Internet – and especially Twitter – is going to stay personal or confidential. Count on your tweets being read by everyone you know, and even the public or media. Doing so might be an overly-cautious step, but it will also allow you to take advantage of the best of Twitter without feeling the worst.